Our responsibility is to earn respect and credibility

When news breaks, people want to know what happened as fast as possible. I am the same way and so is the Bluffton Today staff.

We work really hard to update and inform you as quickly as possible online and then in print with the best information we get from reliable and credible sources. And I emphasize reliable and credible sources.

After recent national events like the Boston Marathon bombings, the news media should be paying even more attention to getting it right and not just first.

Having news that our readers want is important, but having it reported accurately and respectfully is just as important to me.

I have lived in communities where bad things have happened and news outlets have not reported information respectfully or with any thought about the families involved.

While I am just as competitive as the next editor, I coach and preach first and right. It is all about credibility to me. If we lose our credibility as a news source, we have nothing left.

We have a huge responsibility to get the facts, report them and to continue to update with information that is confirmed and sourced.

In light of social media like Twitter and Facebook, we all should have learned a valuable lesson by now. If you follow Twitter at all, you know there are tweets that get retweeted and that information spreads like wildfire. Unfortunately, everything on Twitter is not true. Facebook is the same way, but Twitter has become the way for so many people to get news instantly that it actually scares me.

Information translates into power and everyone wants to be able to say they know about something. What happens sometimes is frantic parents, friends, relatives and others feed the information frenzy and actually create more hysteria.

People in the media business work fast and furious at times, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop to check and double check facts and continue reporting.

Once misinformation is out in the public domain it is pretty darn hard to take it back. But when news media do make mistakes it is even more important to acknowledge those.

Last month I had the privilege of speaking at the University of South Carolina Beaufort as part of the 2013 Student Research and Scholarship Day program.

My session was the final one of the day and it was encouraging to see a near full auditorium.

I talked with the group about newspapers, our future, how we report the news and why we report some things and not others.

Even the definition of news is different from one person to the next. And how we consume news today is so much different than it was 30 years ago, 20 years ago and 10 years ago.

To me, news is what people are talking about. It could be local, national or international.

I asked the students and people at the USCB event how they get their news. It varied as I expected. Some of the options included: NPR, smart phone, Internet, text alerts, newspaper, TV and radio.

News is competitive. We all know that.

I used the CNN gaffe during the Boston Marathon bombings search for the suspect as an example of how crazy breaking news has become.

To me it was a case study in how the news media has become so competitive that some outlets are cutting corners and tweets appear to come from nowhere. Other news people from TV, radio, tabloids and even the mainstream media, pick them up and run with them. That is scary.

I told the group there were some important lessons learned and reiterated:

• Verify your information. Double check it. Triple check it.

• Good sources are still needed.

• Solid reporting wins.

There is no great prize for being first and wrong.

Becoming a trusted and respected news source was my goal in September 2011 when I was asked to come to Bluffton Today as editor. It remains our goal today. Being first and right gains you respect and credibility, and that is Bluffton Today’s mission.

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Despite the TV "got to be first" mentality and the fact that some newspapers do have an agenda and at least show it in the editorials, Kathy Nelson is right on with her goal to,

"• Verify your information. Double check it. Triple check it.

• Good sources are still needed.

• Solid reporting wins."

When doing research on historic topics, newspapers are a reliable way to document facts of the time, keeping in mind that even there, it is wise to collect a diverse collection of sources to verify facts.

All of the bullet points that are stated (verify information, good sources needed, solid reporting, etc) are all good goals for a news agency - HOWEVER, and this is a BIG "however", there are very few (if any) news agencies / journalists who don't allow their bias/politics to get in the way of reporting the news (or at least the news/slant that they want people to see, hear, read, and believe).

That's just the way it is.

It's like that with both left-wing and right-wing news sources, but unfortunately for America, the Left has captured a FIRM grasp on news agencies, as well as academia / teaching in this country and America has suffered because of it.

I know about Twitter and that is as bad as the blogs for rumors and opinions and that is no news source at all. Since no verification is needed, anyone can post wild claims. If you rely on Twitter for news, well.....no comment.

I agree with you, but her bullet points are professional standards for journalists and all professions have standards. That doesn't mean all will adhere to them or even try. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc all have bad eggs and hopefully the law or the professional groups can provide some compliance. But with the constitution and the free speech and free press thingies, it is a different ball game.

Kathy, Sherry Mcnight is an embarrassment to the BT. She does not check here facts three times and her opinions are most likely from Common Cause. Talk about bias opinion, but it is your paper if you like opinions from someone who admires George Soros then so be it. http://politicalvelcraft.org/soros-ii/

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